This invention relates generally to an apparatus for the driving of plugs into railway tie holes remaining after the removal of one or both rails together with their tie plates and spikes from the railway ties, and more particularly to such an apparatus which automatically drives plugs into the railway tie spike holes in timed relationship with the speed of the apparatus moving along temporarily installed narrow gauge rails.
When reconditioning a railway track, it is customary to remove each rail, together with its supporting tie plates and spikes, one-at-a-time while leaving the remaining rail in place as a support for work vehicles used to perform intended work operations along the track. The spike holes remaining in the ties after such removal must then be plugged to facilitate the re-laying of a new rail or portions of the old rail as the rail spikes are driven into the plugged holes. Plugging had been carried out manually by first inserting wooden pegs, or the like, into the spike holes and thereafter manually driving them in place using hand tamping rods or hammers. After re-laying the rail, the other rail, together with its tie plates and rail spikes were then taken up and the manual spike hole plugging operation was repeated.
To avoid this time consuming and laborious operation, railway tie hole-plugging machines were developed for carrying out the plug driving operation. As set forth in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,114,331 and 3,144,835, such machines require the use of an existing rail for movement therealong during the hole-plugging operation which is carried out by the provision of a vertically extending rod driven by a piston. The U.S. Pat. No. 3,114,331 machine has a support pad for supporting the free end of the machine in the vicinity of the spike holes, so that the machine must be manually lifted at its free end and moved along the rail during the plugging operation. The U.S. Pat. No. 3,144,835 machine differs mainly in the provision of a pair of wheel assemblies adapted to engage the adzed surfaces of the ties to facilitate movement of the machine along the rail. And, in both of these prior art machines, an operator is required to control operation of the reciprocating driving member.
Although these prior art machines improve upon the manual approach in driving plugs into the spike holes, they have been found cumbersome to operate, costly to fabricate and largely inefficient as they operate slowly and require the full attendance of an operator to drive the plugs individually as the machine is moved first along one support rail and then along the other support rail.